Auto/Work Accidents

January 21, 2014

One question I hear from people who know that Rolfing® Structural Integration is hands-on bodywork but don't really know what it is: "Is Rolfing® Structural Integration a type of massage?"

One question I hear from clients who are massage therapists or craniosacral practitioners or newer Rolfers™: "Where did you learn that technique?"

These questions are actually interrelated and speak to something relatively unique about Rolfing work – and bodywork mastery in general: the difference between protocols and techniques, and the integration of skills into a sort of "mastery" (for lack of a better word) that can come from years in practice but requires a certain environment to develop.

Students in massage classes typically learn protocols: first do this for a few strokes, then do that for a few strokes, then move here and do this. Many craniosacral classes are the same, at least for the first few levels, teaching rote protocols to do on each client. This works as a learning tool for students, and it makes teaching easier for teachers. For larger classes, it's almost necessary as any other mode of teaching requires a higher teacher:student ratio.

With this kind of "technique" training, you often get competent practitioners. But they can be the kind of practitioner who can do a massage while also planning his shopping list in his head, because it is all rote. These practitioners may develop further, but many will not, as it's easy to just do the same thing over and over again, to have your set of "moves" that tend to get you certain results and that people tend to like. This is what alot of spa treatments are like, especially since the therapists are on tight schedules so it's often like a production line. (I know because I once worked at a "world-class" spa, but was appalled at what was often delivered.) That's not to say it will be bad work, but it's fixed because the nature of the business does not encourage innovation or deviation from a set standard.

Massage practitioners and craniosacral therapists in private practice may get more creative. Continuing education classes can help a practitioner develop in many ways, but sometimes these are places to just learn more techniques to add to your toolbox. These are the kinds of practitioners who ask me "Where did you learn that technique?" Continuing education classes to learn techniques are useful, but they don't take you out of the box. That requires a certain kind of thinking, and a certain "art" on the part of the practitioner.

Rolfing SI as a profession is somewhat unique in its training methodology. We learn a few techniques here and there, but our work really comes down to customization and frank innovation. Even with the "Ten Series" – the ten-session Rolfing series to optimize the body into a basic alignment, as illustrated by our "Little Boy Logo" – the sessions are not a protocol of defined moves but rather a progression of work governed by certain principles and customized to each client.

As I tell my Rolfing clients in Seattle, each session of the Series has a goal and a territory of the body, but to achieve that goal I need to make my own strategy based on what I see in that person's body. This is how we are taught at the Rolf Institute®, so we have to be seeing and analyzing bodies and thinking out of the box from the first days of our Rolfing training. This makes Rolfing training very intense and challenging, and some new Rolfers come out of school feeling overwhelmed and uncertain or even angry as there are not those handy techniques to rely on. It's an uncertain world, but one that Rolfers learn to swim in.

So if you come into my Seattle or Port Orchard office for a Rolfing session, what I do with you will not be rote. It will not be what I did with my last client, or what I did with you the last time I saw you, or even what I did that worked for someone else who came in with the same issue. And what I do may be brand new, something I've never done on anyone else before, something I invent based on what I have to figure out unique to your body. So a good Rolfer is always inventing "techniques" but never storing them away as fixed items to be pulled out of a metaphorical toolkit and applied indiscriminately.

This relates to this earlier post about "Rolfing is to massage as the Navy Seals are to the Boy Scouts", a quote that comes from a comment a Rolfing client made to his Rolfer. A Boy Scout learns a whole bunch of skills and has many useful tricks up his sleeve, but has not matured into a seasoned woodsman. The work of a Navy Seal requires different training and a higher-level arsenal of skills – plus the ability to strategize and think on his feet to get results.

It's the training we receive as Rolfers, and the way we go about thinking about our work, that makes us particularly good at sorting out what others may not get results with. For example, injuries do not respond well to protocols. So many clients come into my Seattle office saying, "I've tried chiropractic, physical therapy, massage, acupuncture... they've helped a little but it doesn't last," or "it knocked the pain back a bit but the problem is still there..." Obviously, when so many credentialed and talented folks have already had a go at this person's issue, I'm going to have to think out of the box, and as is said, "necessity is the mother of invention."

This has led me deeper into craniosacral and visceral work also. Sometimes clients tell me "the way you do craniosacral is different from others I've been to." That may be because as a Rolfer I'm more engaged with the cranial fascias than someone without a "fascial fascination" would be. But it may also be that they've seen other practitioners who have applied a protocol or fixed techniques, as that is how much cranial training is done (at least that outside the osteopathic world). As with Rolfing sessions, I will invent a cranial technique on the spot, if what I've learned elsewhere does not give me access to the right structures or vectors to ease a strain pattern. Now you cannot do this without a certain critical background in anatomy, highly developed palpation skills, and highly developed touch.

So it's not invention for the sake of invention, but invention because you need to determine exactly what is needed for the situation and you have the understanding of the body to do that. Each body event – whether an auto accident, a pain scenario, a postural pattern, etc. – has its unique history and configuration in the body. Unraveling these fully generally requires work from a bodyworker who has moved beyond technique and into the art of the profession, where the practitioner is capable of creating the work that your body needs.

January 13, 2014

This article in The Bellingham Herald gives more details on Rolfer™ Russell Stolzoff's work with the Seattle Seahawks, and how Rolfing® Structural Integration sessions help various members of the team with injury prevention and post-game recovery. It's exciting that the Seahawks are doing so well this season, and that Rolfing sessions are playing some kind of role in helping the team!

The article gives a nice description of how Rolfing work incorporates movement analysis – in this case Stolzoff begins by watching his clients play (and then watching recordings for further study), while I just watch my Rolfing clients walk around my Seattle office. The body doesn't lie, so movement anomalies will reveal to a trained Rolfer's eye areas where there are fascial restrictions or imbalances.

Presumably the Minnesota Rolfers who referred Sidney Rice to Stolzoff were Wayne and Sandy Henningsgaard, who work with Vikings players, as discussed here.

See also my earlier post on Stolzoff's work with Golden Tate, including Tate's video endorsement of Rolfing sessions as part of his regimen.

December 31, 2013

One of my Seattle Rolfer™ colleagues shared this on a discussion forum we have for its relevance to the psoas muscle. In the Rolfing® Structural Integration world, we love (worship?) the psoas, which spans two joints. Broadly speaking, it's the "iliopsoas," with the "psoas" portion going from the femur to the lumbar spine and the "iliacus" going from the femur to the iliac crest of the hip. It's a hip flexor, and is the first muscle to engage as you flex your hip (raise your knee); it's also the muscle that stabilizes when you stand on one leg.

When it's spasmed, the back can go out. Ever heard a friend say his back is out and he can't put on his socks or pants? Well, to do that you have to flex your hip, so this points to the psoas being involved. A tight psoas can also cause many pelvic tilt issues or lumbar sidebends. And not surprisingly – because it travels along the colon and kidneys – there can be a visceral relationship here too.

A happy psoas? An integrated psoas? Watch the lead dancer in this video below and check out the lubrication of that pelvis and how lightly and easily he flexes his hips. All the dancers move well enough, but he stands out for the light quality of his movement.

Now Ida Rolf, the founder of Rolfing Structural Integration, was born in 1896, so her reference point was an earlier era. She always spoke of Fred Astaire as having the "perfect psoas." Watch this video and you'll see the same light quality, his legs just float under him, so that Gene Kelly seems relatively earthbound by comparison.

In working with my Seattle Rolfing clients, I very often do some psoas work – a little or alot! While it may seem paradoxical, the psoas can even play a role in neck and shoulder issues. Anatomically, it's in a different region, but if the psoas is tight and shortening the whole anterior of the body, it will be implicated in a forward-head posture and shoulder-girdle slump. It's a hip flexor, right? When you sit all day long at a desk, your psoas is in that flexed (shortened) posture all day, and lengthening becomes imperative for proper alignment and integration. How to stretch your psoas? – lunges (yogic or otherwise).

So whether it's back pain from an auto/work accident, a sports injury, or too much yardwork; poor posture; a tight pelvis; or a heavy, clunky quality to the legs, learning about your psoas and getting better psoas length and integration may help put you back in your dancing shoes!

December 20, 2013

I have a big dog. She has so much fur that she doesn't need to wear boots in the winter, so I don't have to put her through this:

While this video is entertaining, it also raises interesting mind-body questions. What is going on with these dogs that makes their movement so uncoordinated, and why are relatively similar movement patterns created in all of the dogs? We can't just assume that the dogs hate the boots and want them off: if that were the case, the best solution would be to lie down, apply teeth to boots, and rip the suckers off.

My first theory is that something must be going on with the dogs' proprioception - the body sense that tells you where your body is in space and what it's doing. Having something extra on the feet could be messing with that, by giving the sensation of a bulkier, weightier foot. Basically, your brain is always mapping your body, which creates your body schema. This schema then tells you where you are so that you can do things like stand up and walk around and function in a coordinated way.

To diverge for a bit away from dogs and into body mapping and Rolfing® Structural Integration (SI) – more dogs later! – the body map is probably part of why amputees get phantom-limb pain, feeling a body part as if it were still there after it has been removed. Interestingly, I've heard that a few of my colleagues have mocked up doing Rolfing work on the phantom limb, which helped to decrease the clients' pain. While it could be purely a placebo effect, it would also be that they are somehow influencing the body map that still includes the missing limb.

The body map can also become distorted through injury. Here is an interesting story by Rolfer Robert Schleip about a man who "lost" his head due to injuries – basically, his brain no longer accurately mapped the location of his head, and as a result he was constantly bumping his head. Schleip devised an interesting and playful exercise for him to do at home that quickly re-mapped his head through sensory input, and the head-bumping stopped.

If you are curious about the brain's body mapping, this book is an excellent resource. Also, its author, Sandra Blakeslee, is interviewed here by Rolfer™ and Rolf Movement® Practitioner Kevin Frank, discussing why Rolfing sessions can help restore and improve your body map – increasing coordination and grace in movement. Frank believes that body mapping offers a new theory on how Rolfing SI works to improve posture, coordination, and movement, as he discusses here. Originally we attributed the results of Rolfing SI to thixotropy – the property of a gel to become more liquid when pressure is applied, or in this case the idea that the fascias of the body can be softened and reshaped when a Rolfer applies manual pressure. Frank believes that research into brain mapping suggests that we are changing fascia/posture/etc. by changing the brain map and giving the body corrective sensory and proprioceptive movement.

With my Rolfing clients here in Seattle, I always have them stand up after a session and ask them to feel what is different. Things change in Rolfing sessions, and if you can feel it, you can own it and live from it. I also tell clients to go for a walk (particularly after any work on the feet or legs) to "hard-wire" the changes into their movement patterns. This is particularly useful to do before engaging in any sort of automatic movements or patterning, like jumping in the car and driving off to the next thing in life. Rolfing sessions are as much a process of education into body awareness as they are a process of receiving hands-on work, so I work to enhance somatic awareness. On a mind-body-spirit level, what we are doing is balancing the head, heart, and belly (movement) centers, so that the person functions in a balanced and embodied way. The more this can happen – the integration of changes into the "felt sense" and the body map – the more the improved posture from a Rolfing session will last over time, rather than disappear the next day as often happens with massage.

Back to the dogs. I posted the video link to a Rolfers forum, and asked my colleagues for their thoughts – as Rolfers are an inquisitive and thoughtful bunch – and I got back some interesting responses:

Rolfer Deborah Weidhaas speculates that "when a dog lifts its foot, the world/ground is supposed to go away. With boots on it doesn't, the ground sensory feedback continues, so they lift farther to try to get away from the sensory input."

My colleague and fellow blogger Linda Grace concurs on proprioceptive factors, and also tells me that the leg-lift move may have to do with a primitive reflex being activated. In human infants, primitive reflexes tell the baby to seek the breast for nourishment, to suck, to step into contact with the sole of the foot.... Puppies also have canine-appropriate reflexes, and according to what a researcher told Grace, one of them is to raise the back leg for their mom to clean them up. She speculates that the dogs in boots may be lifting their legs to say "Mom! Get this off me!"

Rolfer Allan Kaplan noted the theory that the movements may be due to "the hairs between the dogs’ toes getting erroneous stimulation when confined in the booties. Once they get used to them, they make the adjustment." This again points to proprioception – a disturbance messes up proprioception, then when the body map adjusts to the input, all is well.

If you are going to put boots on your dog, here is some advice on how to acclimatize them to this new sensation in a gentle and kind way. If you want to try a Rolfing session, here is where you can find a certified practitioner in your area.

November 23, 2013

Are you wondering if Rolfing® Structural Integration could help you? Would you like to hear first-hand from people who have experienced Rolfing sessions? Gary Gurney, my colleague across the country – I practice Rolfing® in Seattle, and he practices in Portland, Maine – has a nice video on YouTube, which I've embedded here for convenience. A number of Gary's clients generously share their experiences, and their words hit all the key points on how Rolfing sessions can benefit people – relieving pain and injuries, enhancing self-awareness, and removing emotional blockages that are lodged in the body. One woman says how Rolfing work was life-changing. That was my own experience, and part of why I became a Rolfer™. For more on the details of what Rolfing SI is, see here and here.

November 20, 2012

Here's a quite good news story from a couple of days ago that describes how former professional hockey player Mark Howe of the Philadelphia Flyers credits Rolfing® Structural Integration with improving his game and extending his career after an injury. The text can be read here, or the same content is in the video below. There's comments from a Rolfer and testimonial from Howe, his father Gordie Howe, and two young gymnasts who discuss how it helps them to stand up straight with better posture and to relieve pain.

February 17, 2012

Here is a beautiful video, "Body of a Dancer," a cinematic poem about Tim Persent, a South African dancer based in the Netherlands. While it is stunning to watch, there's so much wisdom in the words he shares, which I'll discuss through the lens of my experience as a Rolfer™ working daily with people and their bodies, their injuries, their pain, their posture, and their transformations.

I was struck by so many of the things Persent says about his relationship to his body. While I'm not a dancer, it parallels what I have learned from my own trajectory of embodiment, and from my work as a Rolfer with so many other bodies. Let's start with Persent's opening statement: "I am a dancer – my body is my instrument. I take good care of it. It has treated me well. I have been dancing for the past twenty-five years." There are so many key ideas here, I want to parse it out:

"I am a dancer – my body is my instrument." For all of us, our bodies are instruments. Most basically, they are our vehicles through life, but more than that, they immediately express our presence, our energy, our emotions.

"I take good care of it." How many people take good care of their bodies? And what does good care mean? To me, good care is more than just the right food, sleep, and exercise, good care is about a dialogue and relationship with your body. This is something that many people awake to only when their bodies fail them, when an injury or illness prevents "business as usual." But has the body failed them, or is it trying to say something? (More on the dialogue with the body coming below.)

"It has treated me well." This is an expression of gratitude, not rejection. How many of our statements about our bodies reflect appreciation and gratitude, rather than rejection and complaint? From so many of my Rolfing® Structural Integration clients I hear negative statements, things like"I hate my legs," "I don't like how I look," or "Because of this injury I can't do xyz." What if we instead spoke of our bodies in a relationship of appreciation? If you are in relationship with a person and only complain, how good will that relationship be? A relationship benefits from scrutiny, but also from efforts to improve it and to enhance the appreciative elements.

"I have been dancing for the past twenty-five years." I would venture that part of the reason Persent has been dancing so long is that he has treated his body so well, and that has allowed him a long career.

After this opening statement, Persent describes how he warms up, and how he "asks" his fingers to relax. This is so important! When we ask our body something, and listen for a reply, we are in dialogue. If the body says something hurts, we listen and attend to it. If it says it's tired, we find ways to rest. If it says it wants to move, we allow that. If we try a new form of exercise, we ask the body how it feels, and modify the activity accordingly.

This type of feedback loop is the antithesis of the Nike slogan "Just do it," which encourages us to force ourselves and our bodies to do things along a one-way circuit without feedback. I see many clients who have injured themselves through this attitude, and who delay their recovery by continuing to "just do it" even though the bodies is saying "I can't run ten miles right now." Thankfully I also see many clients who are working with their bodies and dialoguing and learning what is uniquely right for each of them. For one Seattle Rolfing client, the Nike attitude and her friend's encouragement got her to sign up for a Boot Camp exercise program. Through the pain and muscle tension that were aggravated, her body told her to find a different form of exercise, at least for now, while her body was releasing old patterns through Rolfing sessions and learning how to regain length and flexibility.

Persent says he imagines his fingers to reach out so they become longer. Thus, even in stretching there's a gentle touch and an invitation to the body, through the mind, to expand. This is very different from an ethos of stretching that sees the body as a series of mechanical levers (bones) and muscles to be pulled on as if objects. In asking the body, imagining, and listening for a response, he is working with the mind-body as a unity, an embodied, intelligent presence. As Persent states, "By thinking an idea, something will happen to the body." Yoga and tai chi are wonderful body disciplines because they invite you into an idea (an asana, a form) with a mindfulness that works this mind-body loop, but mindfulness can be present in any activity, whether eliptical at the gym or a charge down the basketball court.

Persent also says, "Dancing is spirit made flesh: it physicalizes ideas, emotions, thoughts. That's why it is beautiful, powerful, and freeing." As a bodyworker, I see daily how many of us use out bodies to either contain and restrain our energies and emotions. The fascia, or connective tissue, that I work with as a Rolfer is the shrinkwrap that locks the muscles and bodies in physical constraints, and often those physical constraints involve a history of emotions, or injuries, of old self images. We could call this the "personal history made flesh." In freeing the fascia, we free those energies and emotions and make space for a new self image. In doing a Rolfing series, or any transformative bodywork, there is potential for every body to be more "spirit made flesh." This is a renewal, so it's also spirit and body made fresh.

While the average body, not trained for years in dance, will never be able to do many of the things Persent can do, we all have the potential to evolve to experience our bodies with the presence, consciousness, and embodiment he exemplifies.

October 19, 2011

As we are in the football season, I thought I'd share some memories, thoughts, and resources for those interested in how Rolfing® Structural Integration can help professional athletes.

I personally am not a football fan. I've never tried to learn the rules of it, so I see large men clobbering each other to advance a few feet on the field, then everyone takes a break. I hear there's alot of strategy involved for those in the know that makes it compelling. While my interest in the game is minimal, I am nevertheless fascinated by the bodies.

Many years ago, when I was doing deep-tissue massage at a spa on Maui, I had the privilege of working on two NFL players. I say "privilege" because professional athletes' bodies are like fine-tuned sports cars, anatomy developed to a specific, driven purpose. One was a linebacker, and he was built like a tank. I knew enough about football to know that his job was to jump on the other guys. I worked around this gigantic muscular form for an hour, not getting much response but grunts. I was gratified later when one of the spa attendants told me, "I asked him how his massage was, and all he said was "Damn!" I figured that meant I'd made an impact. (I had a reputation for being able to go really deep.)

The other gentleman was a wide receiver (apparently that year's Heisman trophy winner). The body type couldn't have been more different. Again, fantastic muscular development, absolutely sculpted, but this guy was lithe like a ballet dancer. Not knowing about football, I had to ask him what a wide receiver did that he was not built with bulk, and he helped me to understand that his job was to run fast, not get jumped on, and catch the ball and run more. So bulk would not have been in his favor, but man he needed those glutes and leg muscles.

That's about the extent of my understanding of football and my experience working with pro players, but here's a video of a Rolfer™, Wayne Henningsgaard from Minnesota, who has made working with NFL players a niche element in his practice. It's old, but has some nice interview time wth Wayne and video of him working on some Vikings.

As Editor-in-Chief of Structural Integration: The Journal of the Rolf Institute®, I knew Wayne's reputation in this area, and a few years ago I invited him and his wife Sandy (also a Rolfer) to write about their Rolfing work with NFL players for our publication. That article can be viewed here. It's quite an interesting read, about how they work with athletes in training, the time demands of working during the season, and a charming story about Sandy coming home one day to find three Vikings playing football in her backyard with a passel of eight-year-old boys (it must have made their day!).

The upshot is that Rolfing sessions can help any athlete with faster recovery from injuries that occur during training and play, and can prolong a career that depends on optimal functioning of the body. Likewise, for those who are not athletes but have careers that are physically demanding in other ways – like construction, supermarket stocking, massage therapy, long-distance trucking – Rolfing sessions could be a way to help you stay in your game.

August 30, 2011

What is behind sports injuries that won't quickly heal? Running Times Magazine published a great article on the rolf of fascia, and you can read it online here, including information on how Rolfing® Structural Integration can help with fascial injuries and problems.

The article starts with a great explanation of what fascia is, summed up in this quote from Rolfer™ Tom Myers: "While every anatomy [book] lists around 600 separate muscles, it is more accurate to say that there is one muscle poured into six hundred pockets of the fascial webbing." What this means is that any injury or stress to an individual muscle will affect the fascial webbing as a whole. Think of a snag in a knit fabric; it will be most gnarly in the area of the snag itself, but it will create a pull through the fabric that can distort the whole. Resolving the problem means fixing not only the area of the "snag" but also it's compensating patterns in other areas of the fascial net / body.

The article goes on to explain that new research shows that fascia is not just wrapping, but tissue that can "contract, feel, and impact the way you move" - meaning that it can be negatively impacted by lack of activity, chronic stress, poor posture, injuries, and repetitive movements. While this is new news to mainstream healthcare and media, Rolfers have known this for years, and in my Seattle Rolfing® practice I see many athletes with fascial issues that can be helped, as well as many non-athletes whose fascia has become tight or imbalanced from other activities - like hunching over a computer for hours a day, carrying young children around, auto accidents, and the like.

The article mentions Rolfing in a section on fascial care. The things you can do on your own to maintain healthy, flexible, resilient fascia include staying hydrated, streching, and not pushing through injuries. Outside help includes movement education and seeing a "fascial specialist." I think it's fair to say that Rolfers were the first fascial specialists, as Ida Rolf was one of the first people to 1) credit fascia with its proper role in the body and to 2) develop work to lengthen, sculpt, and balance the fascia. Many other practitioners will be trained to work with a local injury, but not necessarily know how to work with the pattern as it extends through your whole body. (I wrote about that here in a blog post about how Rolfers work with fascia differently than massage therapists, but the same thinking applies also to Rolfing versus physical therapy.)

If you are interested to learn more about fascia and how Rolfing could help you, feel free to call me if you are in the Seattle area for a phone or office consult, or visit the Rolf Institute® website for a list of Certified Rolfers and Certified Advanced Rolfers in your area. Like some other Rolfers, I also practice visceral work, craniosacral work, and nerve work. While these use a lighter end of the touch spectrum, they are also fascial-based modalities as fascial strain patterns are behind visceral strain, cranial strain, and tethered nerves.

All in all, Running Times Magazine has published a great article, well worth reading to understand more about your body and fascia in particular.

December 14, 2010

I very often see clients who complain of reduced range of motion (ROM) in the neck (cervical spine). Oftentimes, reduced neck ROM means neck pain as well, or headaches. I find that I can generally bring back good ROM using a combination of Rolfing® Structural Integration and craniosacral work. Sometimes visceral work is needed, or manual therapy for the nerves. Finding a body therapist trained in all of these modalities is your best bet, as they can address the problem whatever its source is.

What Causes Neck ROM Problems?

There are three key motions for the spine: forward- and backward-bending, side-bending, and rotation. Any of these can be reduced by

an auto accident (especially whiplash),

sleeping in an uncomfortable position,

a bad fall,

habitually having your head turned one way (eg., your computer monitor is to your right),

holding the phone to your ear with a shoulder,

a forward-head posture, or

tight muscles.

Think for a moment about a whiplash. Say you are rear-ended while stopped at a traffic signal and your head is turned right because you are saying something to your friend in the passenger seat. Not only are the muscles at the front and back of the neck stressed, because your head is turned, a side-to-side imbalance can also set in, making it more difficult to turn your head one way.

What Kind of Treatment Helps?

Chiropractic work is excellent in these cases, as there is sometimes a vertebrae "out," but the issue may not fully resolve without soft-tissue work like Rolfing sessions, as it's an imbalance in the muscle/fascial tension on the vertebrae that holds them out of place. (This is why people often need less chiropractic care after they do Rolfing sessions: the newly balanced soft tissue allows the vertebrae to hold adjustments better.)

More severe restrictions can involve the dural tube (the "stocking" of fascia that surrounds the spinal cord), which responds to craniosacral work. Sometimes the ligaments that suspend the pleura of the lungs are also involved, as they attach directly to the 7th cervical vertebra; in this case, I do visceral work as well.

I also encourage clients to consider acupuncture as it can be of great assistance. For ongoing maintenance, a yoga practice is excellent.

How Many Sessions Are Needed?

In minor cases, one session will usually fix a "kinked" neck. With a major injury, repeated sessions are often needed, but you should get some immediate relief from the first session and see incremental progress with each session. In Washington and many other states, auto insurance policies will pay for your care after an auto accident, as will worker's compensation in work injuries. I will bill these insurances directly, and so will many other Rolfers™.

With good treatment, you can recover neck ROM in most cases where the problem is musculoskeletal. Your neck will not be a flexible as the chicken in this video below (there's something unique to chicken anatomy), but it might feel this loose!